Live Without a Net

by Lou Anders

  Tsui’s pulse raged in his ears, though he kept silent and calm in the view of the Emperor.

  “If I may?” Napier said, glancing from the Emperor to his invention with an eyebrow raised.

  The Emperor twitched, almost imperceptibly, and in response the Chamberlain stepped forward.

  “You may exhibit your device,” the Chamberlain announced, bowing his head fractionally but never letting his eyes leave Napier’s.

  Wiping his hands nervously on the thin fabric of his pants, Napier crouched down and gripped the wood-handled crank at the rear of the engine. Leaning in, the strain showing on his pale face, he cranked through a dozen revolutions that produced a grinding clatter that set Tsui’s teeth on edge. Finally, when the Chief Computator was sure he could stand the torture no longer, the engine sputtered, coughed, and vibrated to clanking life. Little plumes of acrid smoke billowed up from the corners of the metal cube, and a slow drip of oil from one side puddled in a growing pool on the lacquered floor.

  Licking his lips, Napier worked his way around to the front of the device and rested his fingers on the rows of brass buttons. “I’ll start with a simple operation,” he announced. “Can anyone provide two numbers?”

  No one ventured an answer, all too occupied with the clattering machine on the floor, afraid that it might do them some harm.

  “You, sir?” Napier said, pointing at Tsui. “Can you provide me with two numbers for my experiment?”

  All eyes on him, not least of which the Emperor’s, Tsui could only nod, biting back the answer that crouched behind his teeth, hoping to pounce.

  “One and two,” Tsui answered simply, eyes on the floor.

  With a last look around the assembled for any other response, Napier hit four buttons in sequence.

  “I’ve just instructed the engine to compute the sum of the two provided values,” he explained, pausing for a brief resigned sigh, “and when I press this final button the calculation will occur immediately and the result will be displayed above.”

  Demonstrating a flair for the dramatic, Napier reached back his hand and stabbed a finger at the final button with a flourish. The engine smoked and wheezed even more than before, and with a final clatter the rightmost of the blocks crowning the device spun on its brass axis and displayed the symbol for 3 faceup.

  “There, you see?” Napier said. “The answer produced, without any human intervention beyond the initial input.”

  “I have seen horses,” the Emperor replied in a quiet voice, “clopping their hoofs on cobblestones, do more complicated sums than this.”

  “Perhaps, Your Majesty,” the Chamberlain said, stepping forward, “a more evaluative demonstration is in order. Chief Computator Tsui?” The Chamberlain motioned to him with a brief wave of his hand, and Tsui inched forward, his fingers laced fiercely together in front of him.

  The Chamberlain then snapped his fingers, and a page glided out of the shadows into the center of the hall, a small stool in one hand, an abacus in the other. Setting the stool down a few paces from the foreign devil’s instrument, the page presented the abacus to Tsui and, bowing low, glided back into the shadows.

  “I would suggest, with Your Majesty’s permission,” the Chamberlain said, “that a series of calculations be performed, both by the Proctor Napier and his machine, and by our own Chief Computator and his abacus. Which of the two performs more reliably and efficiently will no doubt tell us more than any other demonstration could.”

  The Emperor twitched his eyebrows, slightly, suggesting a nod.

  “Let us begin,” said the Chamberlain.

  Tsui seated himself on the stool. The abacus on his lap was cool and smooth at his touch, the beads when tested sliding frictionless over the frame of rods. Tilting the frame of the abacus up, he set the beads at their starting position and then left his fingers hovering over the rightmost row, ready to begin.

  The Chamberlain officiated, providing values and operations from a slip of paper he produced from his sleeve. That he’d anticipated this test of man and machine was obvious, though it was inappropriate for any involved to suggest the Chamberlain had orchestrated the events to his ends.

  The first calculation was a simple addition, producing the sum of two six-digit numbers. Tsui had his answer while Napier’s engine was still sputtering and wheezing, taking less than a third of the time needed for the machine to calculate and display the correct answer on blocks.

  The second calculation was multiplication, and here again Tsui finished first. The lapse of time between Tsui calling out his answer and Napier calling out his, though, dwindled in this second round, the engine taking perhaps only twice as long.

  The third calculation was division, a four-digit number divided into a six-digit one. Tsui, pulse racing, called out his answer only an instant before Napier. The ruling of the Chamberlain named the Chief Computator the victor, even after Napier protested that he had inadvertently set his engine to calculate to two decimal places, and that as a result his answer was in fact more accurate.

  The fourth and final calculation was to find the cube root of a six-digit number. This time, with his previous failure in mind, Napier shouted out after the numbers had been read that the answer should be calculated to two decimal points. The Chamberlain, eyes on the two men, nodded gravely and agreed to this condition. Tsui, who was already fiercely at work on the solution, felt the icy grip of dread. Each additional decimal place in a cube root operation increased the time necessary for the computation exponentially, and even without them he wasn’t sure if he would finish first.

  Fingers racing over the beads, too tense even to breathe, Tsui labored. The answer was within reach, he knew, with only seconds until he would be named the victor. The abhorrent clattering machine of the foreign interloper would be exposed for a fraud, and the place of the Chief Computator, and of the Imperial House of Computation, would be secure.

  “I have it!” Napier shouted, and stepped back from the Analytical Engine to let the assembled see the displayed solution. There was a manic gleam in his eyes, and he looked directly at the Emperor without reservation or shame, as though expecting something like applause.

  Tsui was frozen, struck dumb. Reviewing his mental calculations, he realized he’d been nowhere near an answer, and would have required minutes more even to come close. He looked up, saw the symbols displayed on the first blocks of the device, and knew that Napier’s answer was the correct one.

  “It is decided, then,” the Chamberlain announced, striding to Tsui’s side. “Of the four tests, the methods of our tradition won out more often than they did not, and only by changing the parameters of the examination after calculations had begun was the Proctor Napier able to prevail. Napier’s device is a failure.”

  “But … ,” Napier began, on the edge of objection. Seeing the stern expression on the Chamberlain’s face, and looking to the palace guards that ringed the room, the foreigner relented. He’d agreed that his machine should be judged by a majority of tests, and he had to abide by the results. To object now would risk a loss of face, at best, and a loss of something much more dire at worst.

  Tsui, too numb still to speak, rose shakily to his feet and handed the abacus back to the page, who appeared again from the shadows. Bowing to the Emperor, he backed toward the exit, face burning with self-recrimination.

  “The Emperor demands a brief moment,” the Emperor announced, sitting forward with something resembling interest. “British, how much time and work would be needed for you to complete the improvements you mentioned earlier? How many of your countrymen are trained in the arts of this device, who could assist you in the process?”

  Napier, already in the process of packing up his engine dejectedly, rose to his feet. Rubbing his lower lip with an oil-stained finger, he answered.

  “A matter of months to eradicate the current limitations, Your Majesty,” he said. “Perhaps a year. But I would need easily as much time to instruct a staff of men, as at present I am the onl
y one who understands all the aspects of the engine’s manufacture.”

  The Emperor, uncharacteristically demonstrative, nodded twice.

  “Leave now,” the Emperor commanded, and they did.

  In the antechamber, while Napier led a collection of pages and eunuchs in dismantling and boxing up his device, the Chamberlain caught Tsui’s elbow.

  “A moment, Chief Computator,” the Chamberlain said in a low voice, drawing him into an alcove and well out of earshot.

  “My thanks, O Lord Chamberlain,” Tsui said, his tones hushed, “for allowing me to perform this small service for our master the Emperor.”

  “We all serve our part,” the Chamberlain answered. “Remember, though, that the Emperor’s remembrance of this good office will serve only to balance his displeasure that you kept him waiting.”

  “And for that, you have my apologies,” Tsui answered. “But it is strange, I should think, that you would send for me at the House of Computation, in an hour during which it is well known to you that I am elsewhere at my leave. Would not one of my journeymen have been a suitable representative to hear the foreigner’s presentation, and to offer any service you might require?”

  “Perhaps,” the Chamberlain replied, eyes narrowed. “Perhaps it slipped my memory that you would not be found in the House of Computation at this hour, and perhaps it did not occur to me that one of your able journeymen might be as suited for our purposes. But perhaps”—the Chamberlain raised a long finger—“it was best that a member of the House of Computation in your position of leadership was present to see and hear what you have. I have always counted on you, O Chief Computator, to find solutions to problems others thought without resolution. Even, I add, solutions to things others did not even see as problems.”

  Tsui nodded.

  “Yes,” he said, “but of the many hundreds who labor under me in the art of calculation, there are others very nearly as adept.” He paused, and then added, “Many hundreds.”

  “Mmm,” the Chamberlain hummed. “It is best, then, do you not think, that this device of the British does not meet the Emperor’s standards, that so many hundreds of adepts are not removed from their productive positions?”

  That the standards proposed had not been the Emperor’s, but had instead been proposed by the Lord Chamberlain himself, was a point Tsui did not have to raise. The Emperor, in fact, as evidenced by his uncharacteristic inquiry into the production cycle of Napier’s invention, seemed not entirely swayed by the Lord Chamberlain’s stagecraft, the question of the utility of the Analytical Engine not nearly so closed as Tsui might have hoped.

  “I could not agree more,” Tsui answered, thin-lipped and grave. “I thank you for this consideration, and value our exchange.”

  The Chamberlain nodded and, drawing his robes around him, slid away into the antechamber and beyond, leaving Tsui alone.

  The next morning found Tsui in the Ornamental Garden, eyes closed, by the northernmost abacus fishpond.

  The noise of shoes scuffing on gravel at his side startled him, and he opened his eyes to see Royal Inspector Bai standing at his side. He’d made no other sound in his approach.

  “Good morning, Chief Computator,” Bai said, a statement more than a question.

  “Yes, Inspector,” answered Tsui, looking down into the waters of the pond. They were silty and gray, the carnivorous fish almost hidden below the surface. “I would say that it is.”

  “Surprising, one might argue,” Bai went on, “after the excitement of the evening.” The Inspector pulled a waxed-paper-wrapped lump of meat and bread from within his sleeve and, unwrapping it, began to drop hunks of dried pork into the waters.

  “Excitement?” Tsui asked innocently.

  “Hmm,” the Inspector hummed, peering down into the water, which was quiet and still but for the ripples spreading out from the points where the meat had passed. “The fish seem not very hungry today,” he said softly, distracted, before looking up and meeting Tsui’s gaze. “Yes,” he answered, “excitement. It seems that a visitor to the Forbidden City, a foreign inventor, went missing somewhere between the great hall and the main gate after enjoying an audience with the Emperor. The invention that he’d brought with him was found scattered in pieces in the Grand Courtyard, the box that held it appearing to have been dropped from a high-story balcony, though whether by accident or design we’ve been unable to determine. The Emperor has demanded the full attentions of my bureau be trained on this matter, as it seems that he had some service with which to charge this visitor. That the visitor is not in evidence, and this service might go unfilled, has done little to improve the temper of our master, equal-of-heaven and may-he-reign-ten-thousand-years.”

  Tsui nodded, displaying an appropriate mixture of curiosity and concern.

  “As for the man himself,” Bai said, shrugging, “as I’ve said, he seems just to have vanished.” The Inspector paused again and, in a practiced casual tone, added, “I believe you were present at the foreign inventor’s audience yesterday, yes? You didn’t happen to see him at any point following his departure from the hall, did you?”

  Tsui shook his head, and in all sincerity answered, “No.”

  The Chief Computator had no fear. He’d done nothing wrong, after all, his involvement in the business beginning with a few choice words to his more perceptive journeymen and foremen on his hurried return to the Imperial House of Computation and ending in the early morning hours when a slip of paper was delivered to him by one of his young apprentices. On the slip of paper, unsigned or marked by any man’s chop, was a single ideogram, indicating Completion but suggesting Satisfaction.

  Tsui’s business, since childhood, had been identifying problems and presenting solutions. To what uses those solutions might be put by other hands was simply not his concern.

  “Hmm,” the Inspector hummed again, and looking at the still waters of the pond, he shook his head. “The abacus fish just don’t seem interested today in my leavings. Perhaps they’ve already been fed, yes?”

  “Perhaps,” Tsui agreed.

  The Inspector, with a resigned sigh, dropped the remainder of the meat into the northernmost pond and then tossed the remaining bread into the southernmost, where the languid fish began their slow ballet to feed themselves.

  “Well, the Emperor’s service demands my attention,” Inspector Bai said, brushing off his hands, “so I’ll be on my way. I’ll see you tomorrow, I trust?”

  Tsui nodded. “Yes,” he answered, “I don’t expect that I’ll be going anywhere.”

  The Inspector gave a nod, which Tsui answered with a slight bow, and then left the Chief Computator alone in the garden.

  Tsui looked down into the pond and saw that the silt was beginning to settle on the murky bottoms, revealing the abacus fish arranged in serried ranks, marking out the answer to some indefinable question. The Chief Computator closed his eyes, and in the silence imagined countless men working countless abaci, tirelessly. His thoughts on infinity, Tsui smiled.

  Over the past twenty years, the prolific and wildly creative Paul Di Filippo has published well over one hundred stories, distributed across nearly every SF magazine. Collections of his work include The Steampunk Trilogy, Ribofunk, Fractal Paisleys, Lost Pages, and Little Doors. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with his mate, Deborah Newton.

  CLOUDS AND COLD FIRES

  Paul Di Filippo

  Out of a clear sky on a fine summer morning, a buckshot rattle of hailstones across the living pangolin plates of Pertinax’s rooftop announced the arrival of some mail.

  Inside his cozy, low-ceilinged hutch, with its corner devoted to an easel and canvases and art supplies, its shelves full of burl sculptures, its workbench that hosted bubbling retorts and alembics and a universal proseity device, Pertinax paused in the feeding of his parrot tulips. Setting down the wooden tray of raw meat chunks, he turned away from the colorfully enameled soil-filled pots arrayed on his bright windowsill. The parrot tulips squawked at this in
terruption of their lunch, bobbing their feathery heads angrily on their long succulent neck stalks. Pertinax chided them lovingly, stroking their crests while avoiding their sharp beaks. Then, hoisting the hem of his long striped robe to expose his broad naked paw-feet, he hurried outdoors.

  Fallen to the earth after bouncing from the imbricated roof, the hailstones were already nearly melted away to invisibility beneath the temperate sunlight, damp spots on the undulant greensward upon which Pertinax’s small but comfortable dwelling sat. Pertinax wetted a finger, raised it to gauge the wind’s direction, and then directed his vision upward and to the north, anticipating the direction from which his mail would arrive. Sure enough, within a minute, a lofty cloud had begun to form, a flocculent painterly smudge on the monochrome canvas of the turquoise sky.

  The cloud assumed coherence and substance, drawing into itself its necessary share of virgula and sublimula omnipresent within the upper atmosphere. After another minute or two, the cloud possessed a highly regular oval outline and had descended to within five meters of the ground. Large as one of the windows in Pertinax’s hutch, the cloud halted its progress at this level, and its surface began to acquire a sheen. The sheen took on the qualities of an ancient piece of translucent plastic, such as the Overclockers might cherish. Then Pertinax’s animated mail appeared across the cloud’s surface, as the invisible components of the cloud churned in coordinated fashion.

  Sylvanus’s snouty whiskered face smiled, but the smile was grim, as was his voice resonating from the cloud’s fine-grain speakers: